A former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker said in a sharply worded email Thursday that "I have done absolutely nothing wrong" in connection with an FBI raid of her Madison home.

Cindy Archer, who until last month was Walker's deputy administration secretary, also repeated her assertion that she answered truthfully that she was not involved in a long-standing John Doe investigation when asked by a reporter last week.

On Wednesday, about a dozen law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, spent about three hours at Archer's east side Madison home. At least one box was removed from her house by an FBI official, while other agents were seen photographing her home and yard.

The Journal Sentinel reported that the raid on Archer's home was part of an expanding John Doe investigation that included allegations that county staffers of Walker's had done campaign work on county time while he was still Milwaukee County executive and running for governor.

Archer held the county's top staff job - director of the county's Department of Administrative Services - for more than the last three years of Walker's county executive tenure.

"I have done nothing wrong," Archer wrote in an email to the Journal Sentinel. "I have nothing to hide. I feel no need for legal representation.

"I fully cooperated yesterday and intend to cooperate with law enforcement in any way that they need."

Archer complained about coverage linking her to the John Doe.

"This is becoming character assassination and I cannot stand for it," Archer said in a separate email. Archer also said she couldn't discuss Wednesday's raid at her home upon instructions from law enforcement.

Archer, 52, until recently was deputy administration secretary to the Republican governor. She now holds a different state job but is on paid sick leave, records show.

Her sick leave started Aug. 22 - the first day she was to have been on the job as legislative liaison in the Department of Children and Families. Originally, she was to return this coming Monday, but her medical leave has been extended.

Using banked sick leave

The email exchanges show Archer was using banked sick time and some vacation time to cover her paycheck while she was off. Archer asked that 120 hours of her banked sick time be used to pay her during her medical leave, which would cover three of the four weeks she's had on leave.

Archer had accumulated 344 hours of sick leave before cashing in a portion of it. She worked for the state earlier in her career, from 1987 to 2003, according to her résumé. She started as an analyst with the Legislative Audit Bureau and worked as a budget analyst and division administrator for the state Department of Corrections.

After leaving the state government employment in 2003, Archer worked as an administrator for Blackhawk Technical College, Brown County and Milwaukee County.

"When a state employee is hired by another state agency, the employee's leave time transfers to the new department," said Stephanie Hayden, spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families. "Employees may use earned leave time at the discretion of their supervisor."

Greg Gracz, state employment relations director, said state employees who quit their jobs can resume using banked sick leave if they return to a state position within five years.

For top state officials, the rules are even more generous.

Under state law, Gracz said, state workers appointed to "career executive positions" have their accumulated sick time restored if they later return to another career executive post, regardless of how long they were away.

The John Doe probe was launched last year after the Journal Sentinel reported that another Walker staffer who was being paid by Milwaukee County taxpayers to help citizens with county services was instead using her work time to post anonymous comments supporting candidate Walker on websites and blogs.

As part of the investigation, authorities earlier seized the work computers of two former Walker staffers and executed a search warrant of one of their homes.

John Doe investigations are secret proceedings in which witnesses can be subpoenaed and compelled to testify under oath about potential criminal matters and are forbidden from talking publicly about the case. Sources said prosecutors have been looking into whether county staffers were doing political work while on the clock and failing to do county jobs.

Walker still mum

For a second day in a row, Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said he had no comment. Walker was in Kentucky on Thursday campaigning and helping raise money for Republican gubernatorial nominee David Williams and the Kentucky GOP ticket.

Walker has previously said he has not been contacted personally by prosecutors. He said officials asked his campaign last year for emails and information apparently related to the staffer who was posting pro-Walker messages on websites during work time.

County and federal authorities have declined to discuss the Wednesday raid or the John Doe probe.

Staffer posted on blogs

Milwaukee County prosecutors launched the investigation at about the same time Darlene Wink quit her county job as Walker's constituent services coordinator in May 2010 after admitting that she was frequently posting online comments on Journal Sentinel stories and blogs while on the county clock. Nearly all of her posts praised Walker or criticized his opponents.

Authorities later took her work computer and that of Tim Russell, a former Walker campaign staffer who was then working as county housing director, and executed a search warrant of Wink's home.

Neither Wink nor Russell landed a job with the state when Walker took office in January. Wink did not seek a state job, said her attorney, Christopher Wiesmueller.

Archer and chief of staff Tom Nardelli were Walker's top two lieutenants for the last three years of his eight-year tenure as county executive, including the busy months leading up to the November election. Both eventually followed Walker to Madison from Milwaukee County after the former county executive won the governor's race in November.

Nardelli quit his state job as administrator for the Division of Environmental and Regulatory Services in July. That was three days after he had accepted the job, a transfer from another state administrative position. Nardelli was Walker's chief of staff in the county executive's office.

Nardelli said this week that he knew nothing about the reason for the FBI visit to Archer's home and that no law enforcement had visited his home. Nardelli has previously said he hasn't been contacted by the authorities in the John Doe investigation.

Archer, who abruptly left her top post with Walker's administration last month for "personal family matters," had another politically appointed job under the governor already lined up.

She took a $25,000 pay cut in moving to the position at the Department of Children and Families, but the nearly $100,000 salary in that job is still nearly $40,000 more than the pay of the last person to hold the job.

State Children and Families Secretary Eloise Anderson has said Archer has a higher salary than her predecessor because of Archer's extensive background in state and local government and higher educational attainment.

John Diedrich and Jason Stein of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

About Steve Schultze

Schultze joined the Milwaukee Journal staff in 1985, covering state government and politics from the paper's state capitol bureau in Madison. He also served as Madison bureau chief for five years. Following the Journal-Sentinel merger in 1995, Schultze shifted to the paper's investigative/enterprise team, where he co-authored series on abusive teachers in the Milwaukee Public Schools, influence peddling in the administration of Gov. Tommy Thompson and shortcomings of a $3 billion regional sewer system upgrade. In 2007, he began covering Milwaukee County government. Schultze is a graduate of the University of Colorado School of Journalism.

About Patrick Marley

Patrick Marley covers state government and state politics. He is the author, with Journal Sentinel reporter Jason Stein, of "More Than They Bargained For: Scott Walker, Unions and the Fight for Wisconsin.”